Falling for Owen (11 page)

Rained sighed again, her eyes going dreamy.

“A reading corner by the window with a crystal chandelier above a tan chenille chaise lounge. A round table beside it in distressed white with a green glass vase filled with white roses.”

“So dreamy.”

He chuckled. “You’re so easy.”

“Which is why I love her, but please don’t get her started on decorating tonight. One meal without deciding the color of this room or that one, that’s all I ask,” Brody pleaded.

Claire laughed beside him. “I’m a closet decorator myself. I haven’t finished the house because I like to have the whole plan in mind before I start. The master bedroom is done—”

“And sounds absolutely lovely,” Rain interrupted.

“I’m about to finish the master bath. I’ve got the major items done. Sand-quartz countertops, the claw-foot tub has been refinished, thick white towels hang from brushed nickel towel bars. The walls are a soft sky blue.” She turned to him. “Kind of like your eyes.”

“You’re just bragging now,” Rain said, smiling.

“I need to add the finishing touches. I can’t wait to finish.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a whole house to do myself, and this one”—Rain cocked her head in Brody’s direction—“is no help at all.”

“I told you to do whatever you want to the house. All I wanted is to fill the rooms with the girls and however many more children you’ll give me.”

Rain smiled at Brody with a world of love in her eyes. “I’m working on the next one right now.”

Brody kissed her hand again. “See, I did my part. Now you decorate his or her room.”

“Yes, dear.”

Brody looked at Claire. “She doesn’t really mean that. So you two talk decorating, and Owen and I will talk horses and sports and everyone will be happy.”

Claire laughed and looked across the table at Rain. “Did you see the latest issue of
Southern Living
? They featured a refurbished Louisiana mansion. You might be interested in seeing the master suite and living room. I fell in love with the kitchen countertops and tiles.”

The next hour they spent talking with some, but not much, input from Owen and Brody. Rain and Claire covered decorating, swapping likes and dislikes, ideas for this room and that one. Over dinner, Rain asked Claire about her college experience, since Rain had missed out to raise the girls. Claire talked about her friends, classes, and even some funny anecdotes about working as a waitress at a local pub to pay for her books. She’d received a full academic scholarship. Owen had been right to call her smart.

To Brody’s dismay, Rain told Claire about them growing up together until one day they looked at each other and being friends just wasn’t enough anymore. Rain covered the basics of how they split up, how she got Autumn from Roxy, and how Brody came home to get them all back together as a family.

Claire opened up about her ex-husband and how she fell for a lie. He understood that someone as smart and capable as Claire would take her ex’s betrayal as a personal insult to her intelligence. The thing was, when it came to matters of the heart, the mind may see, but the heart still wants until it doesn’t.

Owen listened carefully to everything she said about the asshole and everything she didn’t. In the end, she said the only thing he really needed to know.

“The marriage turned out bad, but not because I didn’t put my heart into it. I still want the husband and kids and home, but next time I want it all with a man who wants them with me, too.”

Rain and Brody shared a look. They had exactly what Claire was talking about and knew it.

Claire caught Owen staring at her.

“And that is the last thing I should have said on a first date. Or any date. Sorry, I’m out of practice.”

“Never apologize for saying what you want,” Owen said. “Makes it easier on us guys.”

“How about some of that decadent double chocolate raspberry torte I saw on the menu?”

He laughed and gave her a nod. “Anything you want.”

“You may regret saying that someday.”

“I doubt it,” he responded, feeling very much like indulging her every whim for the rest of his life. It shouldn’t be like this. Not this fast. Not this easy. Not this complete. Then again, what did he know? He’d never felt this way about anyone.

“I’m so glad you said something because I’m dying for a piece of cheesecake with fresh strawberries and cream,” Rain gushed.

“Craving. Really?” Brody asked, an indulgent grin on his face.

“Yes. Really.”

“Like you need a reason to want cheesecake,” Owen teased.

“The baby wants cheesecake. I’m just making sure he gets it.”

“Now it’s a he?” Brody asked.

“We’ll find out in a few months when they do the ultrasound.”

“Owen, are you hoping for another niece or a nephew?” Claire asked.

“If I can’t have one of my own, whichever one she has will be my new little buddy.”

“Why can’t you have one of your own?” Claire sucked in a breath. “I’m sorry. That was rude and intrusive.”

He laughed and Brody nearly choked on his coffee.

“I can have kids, but I don’t have a wife, and Rain is already using her uterus for Brody’s new McBride baby.”

“Oh,” Claire mumbled, her cheeks pink, making her even prettier and endearing.

“Get your own uterus,” Brody teased.

He and Claire laughed and dessert arrived, distracting them from the baby topic.

“Brody, tell me the worst thing Owen ever did,” Claire said out of the blue.

“Not a chance. Owen and I stick together. We don’t rat on each other.”

Claire turned to him and he nodded his confirmation of the truth in Brody’s words.

“A real and true bro code.”

“When you grow up with a father like ours, yeah, you learn to rely on each other,” Owen confirmed.

She wanted to know about him. She could have asked him, but she’d asked Brody to get his view, because Brody had shown himself as direct and truthful to a fault. Brody didn’t care what anyone thought of him; he spoke the truth even if you didn’t want to hear it.

Owen would like to keep his darker side a mystery until she got to know who he was now better, but if she was going to see the whole picture of who he was, she needed to see the flaws.

A risk, but he gave Brody a look to go ahead and sat back and waited for Claire’s reaction.

Brody looked him in the eye and said, “The bar fight.”

“She asked for the worst thing I ever did.”

Brody took a deep breath and sighed it out. “Owen and I used to party hard back in the day. We drank to excess and went from one woman to the next.” Brody glanced at Rain. “Sorry.”

“No sorry for telling the truth. Go on. Tell her what happened.”

“Owen and this girl named Molly were seeing each other off and on for months.”

“Tell her the whole truth,” Owen coaxed.

“Owen and Molly used to have sex on a regular basis. He didn’t care what she did. She didn’t care what Owen did. They used each other for sex and nothing else.”

Claire sat back in her seat, but kept her gaze on Brody as he told the tale.

“They ran hot and cold with each other, depending on the night and Owen’s mood. Molly liked to have fun, so when Owen didn’t want to play, she found someone else who would. Owen did the same. Molly found someone else less volatile than Owen was back then, and it seemed she had a good thing going for a couple of months.

“So, one night Owen and I are raising hell down at Roxy’s, drinking and playing pool. Molly is at the bar with another girl. The friend leaves and this big dude comes up to Molly and starts yelling at her, causing a scene, but the music’s too loud and Owen can’t hear what they’re saying. I didn’t really give a shit and kept playing pool against this other guy.

“So the guy leaves Molly crying at the bar. Owen goes over to see what happened. The next thing I know, he’s dragging the guy out the front door. I look back at the bar, and Molly’s tears are all dried up, and she’s got this smug smile on her face. Only one reason a woman looks like that: she’s just played Owen. Her friend returns and says something. Molly says something back and the friend gets pissed and runs for the front door. I chased after her, but too late to stop Owen.”

Brody sucked in another deep breath and sighed it out. Owen wished Claire hadn’t asked. He hated going back to that night more than Brody hated telling the story.

“Owen confronted the guy in the parking lot. He accused the guy of hitting Molly in the stomach until she ‘lost the baby.’ The guy denied it, pissed off Owen would even suggest such a thing. Drunk and angry, he threw a punch at Owen, barely catching him when Owen ducked out of the way. Owen came up fighting and clocked the guy, breaking his jaw. Drunk, in a rage, Owen tackled the guy and beat the living hell out of him, until I caught up to him and pulled him off. Owen broke three bones in his hand, but the guy ended up in the ICU for a week and the hospital another five days.”

Claire’s gaze fell on him, but he couldn’t look at her. He sat quietly contemplating the moisture dripping down his water glass, seeing nothing but his bloody hands and the guy’s pulverized face.

“I make Owen take a seat on the curb. Molly’s friend is screaming and cussing, leaning over the guy, crying, ‘No, no, no.’ She jumps to her feet and runs over to Owen, standing over him demanding to know why he’d beat the guy half to death when he’d done nothing wrong.

“Still pissed off, Owen jumps up and gets in her face, saying Molly told him what he did to her. The friend gasps, put both hands over her mouth, then explodes with a string of swear words I won’t repeat in polite company, and tells Owen Molly is a lying bitch. She took Molly to the clinic a week before to abort the baby. The guy somehow found out and confronted Molly at the bar, pissed she got rid of his baby.”

“He was a good guy who wanted his child, and I beat him half to death because that lying, cheating bitch played me,” Owen spat out, still pissed about the whole damn thing.

Claire looked across the table at Rain and asked her, “Did you just hear the same story I heard?”

Rain smiled and nodded, knowing something Owen couldn’t figure out by Claire’s tone.

“Yes I did.”

“I thought you were going to tell me the worst thing he ever did,” she said to Brody.

“I just did.”

“Let me get this straight. The worst thing he ever did was defend a woman he believed to be innocent by beating the shit out of some guy he thought hit her when she was pregnant with his baby.”

“Yes, but it was a lie and the guy was innocent,” Brody clarified.

“Yes, I get that, but Owen didn’t know that. He didn’t do it for no reason.”

“It doesn’t matter why I did it, the guy almost died,” Owen snapped.

“I take it the cops came. What did they say?”

“The other guy threw the first punch. Owen got off on the fight, but they took him in for drunk and disorderly after he went to the hospital for a cast on his hand,” Brody said.

“Still, it sounds to me like the worst thing you ever did shows your true character better than anything.”

Owen scrubbed his hands over his face, wishing he never gave Brody permission to tell her the truth about him. He might have gone his whole relationship with Claire without her finding out his true character. He’d spent the last years earning his degree, defending his clients, and staying out of trouble.

“Your instinct is to protect the innocent and pummel the guilty. You only got it wrong because you were drunk and that girl lied to you.”

“Yes, and six months later the guy died of a prescription drug overdose.” Owen finished the story.

“That’s not your fault,” Claire said.

“If I hadn’t fought with him, he’d have never ended up in the hospital and on those meds.”

“If that bitch hadn’t lied, none of it would have happened.”

“Told you,” Rain said.

“I hope she got hers,” Claire said.

“Owen turned her in for dealing. The cops found over a pound of marijuana in her apartment stashed in the heating vent. She went away for eighteen months.” Rain raised her glass of water. Claire clinked her glass of wine to it, toasting to their shared opinion of Molly.

“Not good enough, but I guess it will have to do for what she did to you,” Claire said.

“She didn’t do anything to me.”

“She made you believe what you did was wrong even though you did it for all the right reasons. If you don’t believe me, believe your brother and Rain. Neither of them thinks what you did is wrong.”

“Brody just told you the worst thing I ever did.”

“I told her the worst thing you think you did,” Brody clarified. “I agree with Rain and Claire. Not your fault, man.” Brody turned to Claire. “He’s the older brother. He always protected me from our old man as a kid. His mother, too, until she left.” Brody looked him dead in the eye. “Look how well you looked out for Rain and the girls when I was gone.”

Owen sighed, not knowing what to say when Claire, Brody, and Rain all praised him for trying to do the right thing.